Much of the reigning research on non-religion and non-belief focuses on demographics and personality characteristics. While this is a necessary foundation on which future research may be built upon, such data does not necessarily produce theory. In many ways the dominant cultural milieu of religions along with the benign intent of some researchers force a person who holds no belief in a God to assume an oppositional identity in relation to religion. This oppositional identity tautologically sets researchers up to continually (...) define its object by the absence of something. This something cannot always function as a normative point of reference in which to tell researchers what to look for. This article provides one such normative trajectory, termed “horizontal transcendence.”. (shrink)

This rich and varied collection of essays addresses some of the most fundamental human questions through the lenses of philosophy, literature, religion, politics, and theology. Peter Augustine Lawler and Dale McConkey have fashioned an interdisciplinary consideration of such perennial and enduring issues as the relationship between nature and history, nature and grace, reason and revelation, classical philosophy and Christianity, modernity and postmodernity, repentance and self-limitation, and philosophy and politics.

This paper presents the results of a study of the effect of a business ethics course in enhancing the ability of students to recognize ethical issues. The findings show that compared to students who do not complete such a course, students enrolled in a business ethics course experience substantial improvement in that ability.

The dissertation provides a critical comparison of the theories of John Rawls and Alasdair MacIntyre with particular attention to the question of identity. The theme of true persuasion as situated by the concepts of eros and logos in Plato's Phaedrus is developed and applied to two contemporary understandings of the person. I suggest explanations for the paradoxical way in which Rawls and MacIntyre tend to read their understandings of identity in terms of the understandings of citizenship. An idiom of Will (...) elaborated in each theorist's view of politics and rationality results in a conflation of person and citizen and the reduction of true persuasion to public philosophy. (shrink)

Journalists seldom consider the layers of those affected by their actions; third parties such as families, children, and even people unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This article argues for consideration of the broader group, considering a range of options available for doing their duty to inform the public while also minimizing harm to others. Journalists might compare themselves with other professions that have similar roles, such as anthropologists, on such issues as confidentiality and (...) disclosure. A broader lesson is the value of applying different views, theoretical frameworks, and starting points to the ethical issues in any profession. (shrink)

The moral worth of attorneys has traditionally been judged in terms of compIiance with legal codes of ethics. These codes, ostensibly designed to promote smooth and equitable functioning of an adversary system, are manifestations of a rule utiIitarian moral system. This paper argues that ethical attorneys have a higher calling than rule compIiance and that "moral commitment," which combines commitment to "right" solutions and moral courage, is a superior yardstick for measuring their moral worth.

The ritual handling of serpents remains an unnoticed cultural form for the explanatory aims and theoretical insights desired by cognitive scientists of religion. In the current article, we introduce the Hood and Williams archives at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga that contains data culled from Hood’s 40-plus year career of studying serpent handlers. The archives contain hundreds of hours of interviews and recordings of speaking in tongues, handling fire, drinking poison, and taking up serpents by different congregants and congregations. (...) The archive remains a rich but untapped source of data for building, testing, and refining cognitive theories of ritual in general, and serpent handling in specific. We connect Hood’s work to current cognitive theories and engage critically with research on the social functions of ritual. Finally, we discuss several further reasons to pay more attention to SHS communities and practices in cognitive theories of ritual. (shrink)

This paper begins to explore how corporate social responsibility (CSR) has evolved in Mexico. It looks at Mexico's social and political history to see the values that shaped expectations about how Mexican firms should address the needs and desires of their stakeholders in various periods in the 20th century. Particular attention is given to firms in Monterrey because they pioneered a form of company paternalism that reflected early CSR initiatives. Finally the paper briefly examines some contemporary CSR practices by large (...) Mexican firms. The paper begins to fill a gap in the business-andsociety literature about CSR practices outside the U.S. and Western European countries, which have received most attention by business-and-society scholars. (shrink)

This paper begins to examine the question of where societal expectations about the nature of corporate social responsibility come from. In particular, we begin to consider arguments about how a country’s stage of economic development affects the kinds of social responsibility expectations that firms face and then how the nature of a country’s civil society might affect CSR expectations. The factors that should be taken into account for future empirical research are also considered.

This note uses an analysis of Broussais's objection to medical ontology to suggest why Broussais's neologism o o is derived not from o but from a conflation of o and the plural of o o. For Broussais medical ontology, in contrast to philosophical ontology, always refers to abstract entities alleged to explain sensible symptoms, o o, in the sense of indivisible particles in the writings of Lucretius and Epicurus, are such particles; o are not. Keywords: Broussais, disease, medical ontology CiteULike (...) Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The following demarcates the sense of the human person in Orthodox-Catholic bioethics from the family of senses proper to secular bioethics and philosophy. The radically different sources of knowledge about the senses proper to each discipline suggest that the importation of philosophical and secular psychological distinctions and analyses into true Christianity's concern with the human person, is fundamentally misguided. This suggestion is confirmed by examination of the articles of Crosby, Glannon, Hoswepian, and Meador and Shuman.

The doctrine of double effect shows that for which the moral agent is responsible, by explicating the relationship between the act directly intended and the consequences of that act. I contend that this doctrine is necessary not only for natural law absolutism, but also for Donagan's Kantianism and for Quinn's revised construal of the doctrine, and even for consequentialism, as bioethical implications of the doctrine make clear. For those who do not accept this necessity, I contend that it is necessary (...) metatheoretically, in order to deal with those moral agents with irreconcilably different notions of the morally good. Keywords: cost-benefit analysis, double effect, intention, side effect CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The religiosity of academics has been studied for over a decade. With few exceptions, this research has been conducted on American “elite” scientists, and data from non-Western countries is lacking. Drawing from psychological and sociological literature, the present exploratory study investigates the religiosity of Turkish academics and their perceptions on the relationship between religion and science, and associated variables such as interpretation of the Quran, and belief in evolution and creationism. Moreover, we address criticism directed at previous research by probing (...) for different God concepts among believing academics. Although cultural differences can be identified, the results generally support the idea that academics are less religious with 54% identifying as “less religious” or “not religious,” compared to 24.2% self-identifying as “religious” or “extremely religious.”. (shrink)

This paper begins to explore how corporate social responsibility (CSR) has evolved in Mexico. It looks at Mexico's social and political history to see the values that shaped expectations about how Mexican firms should address the needs and desires of their stakeholders in various periods in the 20th century. Particular attention is given to firms in Monterrey because they pioneered a form of company paternalism that reflected early CSR initiatives. Finally the paper briefly examines some contemporary CSR practices by large (...) Mexican firms. The paper begins to fill a gap in the business-andsociety literature about CSR practices outside the U.S. and Western European countries, which have received most attention by business-and-society scholars. (shrink)

We explore the issue of media content and corporate social responsibility by considering three questions:1. Why is this issue becoming so salient to a variety of stakeholders across the political spectrum at this time?2. What are the ethical issues that companies and policy makers should be concerned about with regard to media content?3. How can media-related companies and industries either better self-regulate or enhance consumer choice to respond to legitimate concerns about access tocontent?

Scholars and professional organizations in bioethics describe various approaches to “quality assessment” in clinical ethics. Although much of this work represents significant contributions to the literature, it is not clear that there is a robust and shared understanding of what constitutes “quality” in clinical ethics, what activities should be measured when tracking clinical ethics work, and what metrics should be used when measuring those activities. Further, even the most robust quality assessment efforts to date are idiosyncratic, in that they represent (...) evaluation of single activities or domains of clinical ethics activities, or a range of activities at a single hospital or healthcare system. Countering this trend, in this article we propose a framework for moving beyond our current ways of understanding clinical ethics quality, toward comprehensive quality assessment. We first describe a way to conceptualize quality assessment as a process of measuring disparate, isolated work activities; then, we describe quality assessment in terms of tracking interconnected work activities holistically, across different levels of assessment. We conclude by inviting future efforts in quality improvement to adopt a comprehensive approach to quality assessment into their improvement practices, and offer recommendations for how the field might move in this direction. (shrink)

The picture of information acquisition as the elimination of possibilities has proven fruitful in many domains, serving as a foundation for formal models in philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and economics. While the picture appears simple, its formalization in dynamic epistemic logic reveals subtleties: given a valid principle of information dynamics in the language of dynamic epistemic logic, substituting complex epistemic sentences for its atomic sentences may result in an invalid principle. In this article, we explore such failures of uniform substitution. (...) First, we give epistemic examples inspired by Moore, Fitch, and Williamson. Second, we answer affirmatively a question posed by van Benthem: can we effectively decide when every substitution instance of a given dynamic epistemic principle is valid? In technical terms, we prove the decidability of this schematic validity problem for public announcement logic (PAL and PAL-RC) over models for finitely many fully introspective agents, as well as models for infinitely many arbitrary agents. The proof of this result illuminates the reasons for the failure of uniform substitution. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Little Way:Ferdinand Ulrich on AccidentsRachel M. ColemanWe live in a material reality. Obviously it is not the case that we live in a merely material reality, but it is worth remembering that we are corporeal substances given to be in a corporeal reality. Our materiality informs every aspect of our being, everything about us—including how we come to know.The German philosopher Ferdinand Ulrich never forgets this about the (...) human being or the reality in which the human is given to be—indeed, Ulrich, like his intellectual mentor and constant dialogue partner Thomas Aquinas, is a realist. That is to say that, like Thomas, Ulrich is always thinking about the world as it is given to man to inhabit and understand. This then includes thinking about matter, which, because of its status as lowest rung on the ladder of creation, is often overlooked in our thinking. Our materiality, with all of its implications for man, the world, and the task of man that is philosophy—that is, thinking and knowing being itself—is a touchstone for Ulrich's metaphysics and indeed all of his work.1Ulrich's dense and textured metaphysics can be approached in many ways, but perhaps none is so crucial as his attention to the small and seemingly insignificant, which is why he gives so much time and attention to matter throughout his corpus—for what could be more insignificant than that which does not exist in itself? Ulrich's attention to matter, however, is not simply in the speculative mode, wondering about the nature of potentia pura (though this is also included), but rather this kind of speculation leads [End Page 377] Ulrich to thinking through the implications of materiality for man's being and knowing. One of these is what Ulrich refers to repeatedly throughout Homo Abyssus, his great work of metaphysics and meta-anthropology, as "the little way." In the first chapter of that book, Ulrich writes:The light of being, since it doesn't cling to itself or allow reason to come to an end "next to" God, is therefore precisely what compels speculative reason to transcend beings into the absolute ground. This act of transcendence enraptures reason, which has been illuminated by being, elevating reason into the light of absolute truth, while reason precisely thereby enters onto the "little way" in the multiplicity of finite being.2According to Ulrich, in order to know and understand being itself, or "absolute truth," as quoted just above, human reason must enter onto this "little way," which can be reached only "in the multiplicity of finite being."The materiality of the world and the multiplicity of finite being therein have everything to do with each other, and Ulrich claims that, in order to know and understand absolute truth or being itself, precisely this multiplicity must be our starting point. Already then, at the beginning of Homo Abyssus, Ulrich draws our attention to the significance of matter.Ulrich receives this phrase, "the little way," from none other than St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who, in accepting her littleness, so to speak, not as a burden but as a gift, was given to work great acts.3 We have a clue already, [End Page 378] then, for beginning to understand how Ulrich conceives of matter and multiplicity: as that which, though nothing in itself, allows us to know the greatest truths—indeed, the "absolute truth." [End Page 379]Here we cannot explore every aspect of what Ulrich means when he uses the phrase "the little way," nor can we outline the entirety of how Ulrich's thinking about matter and materiality informs his metaphysics.4 We can, however, approach this topic in Ulrich's thinking through one particular implication of material being: accidents, or accidental being. Accidents do not subsist in themselves, but rather only in another—that is, substance—and as such, according to Ulrich, often get passed over in our thinking in favor of what we think of as more important subjects. And yet, in a certain sense, accidents are all we ever encounter in the world: while the tree could theoretically be any color at all, it... (shrink)

Unlike standard modal logics, many dynamic epistemic logics are not closed under uniform substitution. A distinction therefore arises between the logic and its substitu- tion core, the set of formulas all of whose substitution instances are valid. The classic example of a non-uniform dynamic epistemic logic is Public Announcement Logic (PAL), and a well-known open problem is to axiomatize the substitution core of PAL. In this paper we solve this problem for PAL over the class of all relational models with (...) infinitely many agents, PAL-Kω , as well as standard extensions thereof, e.g., PAL-Tω , PAL-S4ω, and PAL-S5ω. We introduce a new Uniform Public Announcement Logic (UPAL), prove completeness of a deductive system with respect to UPAL semantics, and show that this system axiomatizes the substitution core of PAL. (shrink)

This article shows that core ideas of Hobbes's argument for civil authority have their sources in commentary on or texts of the Hebraic Bible. These ideas centre on the Hebraic idea of created nature and of man . It is further shown that both the eschatological and enlightenment components of Hobbes's philosophy originate in these same biblical ideas. Therefore, the often stressed and accustomed division of Leviathan into a secular and a religious teaching is mistakenly conceived.

This chapter reviews recent philosophical and neuroethical literature on the morality of moral neuroenhancements. It first briefly outlines the main moral arguments that have been made concerning moral status neuroenhancements. These are neurointerventions that would augment the moral status of human persons. It then surveys recent debate regarding moral desirability neuroenhancements: neurointerventions that augment that the moral desirability of human character traits, motives or conduct. This debate has contested, among other claims (i) Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu’s contention that there (...) is a moral imperative to pursue the development of moral desirability neuroenhancements, (ii) Thomas Douglas’ claim that voluntarily undergoing moral desirability neuroenhancements would often be morally permissible, and (iii) David DeGrazia’s claim that moral desirability neuroenhancements would often be morally desirable. The chapter discusses a number of concerns that have been raised regarding moral desirability neuroenhancements, including concerns that they would restrict freedom, would produce only a superficial kind of moral improvement, would rely on technologies that are liable to be misused, and would frequently misfire, resulting in moral deterioration rather than moral improvement. (shrink)

Logical frameworks that are sensitive to features of sentences’ subject-matter—like Berto’s topic-sensitive intentional modals (TSIMs)—demand a maximally faithful model of the topics of sentences. This is an especially difficult task in the case in which topics are assigned to intensional formulae. In two previous papers, a framework was developed whose model of intensional subject-matter could accommodate a wider range of intuitions about particular intensional conditionals. Although resolving a number of counterintuitive features, the work made an implicit assumption that the subject-matter (...) of an intensional conditional is a function of the subject-matters of its subformulae. This assumption—which I will call a principle of topic sufficiency—runs counter to some natural intuitions concerning topic. In this paper, we will investigate topic sufficiency and offer a semantic account that is state-sensitive, providing an implementation through the introduction of topic-sensitive logics related to William Parry’s prototypical $\mathsf {PAI}$. (shrink)

Violence risk assessment tools are increasingly used within criminal justice and forensic psychiatry, however there is little relevant, reliable and unbiased data regarding their predictive accuracy. We argue that such data are needed to (i) prevent excessive reliance on risk assessment scores, (ii) allow matching of different risk assessment tools to different contexts of application, (iii) protect against problematic forms of discrimination and stigmatisation, and (iv) ensure that contentious demographic variables are not prematurely removed from risk assessment tools.

In The Agrarian Vision , Thompson argues that a better appreciation of agrarian ideals could lead to a more virtuous, more sustainable way of life. While I agree with Thompson in many respects, there are some aspects of the book that I question and others that I would like to hear Thompson explicate in greater detail. In this paper, I question Thompson’s claim that agrarian farmers and farming communities serve as ideal models of virtuous habits and good character. I challenge (...) Thompson’s use of virtue theory, particularly the notion that farming virtues can be acquired without participating in farming practices. In the end, I make the point that Thompson seems to vacillate between being realistic and being idealistic, which may seriously complicate our notions of responsibility and obligation in practice. (shrink)

Sir Thomas Berkeley has scarcely more than a liminal status among literary scholars and historians, even those who study fourteenth-century England. We may rather dimly remember him as an aristocratic spear carrier in Shakespeare's Richard II, a reflection of real activities known to historians. Or we may recall that he sponsored an extraordinarily prolific and important translator, the Cornishman John Trevisa.

This is the third in a series of articles that address what is known or knowledgeably held about the consciousness of fully commissurotomized people. This installment discusses three alternative conceptions with which the present author does not agree. They are Eccles's dualist-interactionist conception, Gillett's linguistic conception, and Rey's eliminative conception. With regard to the first two of these, issues are raised with the intention of helping the respective proponent to improve his conception. In the case of the third, it is (...) urged that the view not be promoted, for moral reasons, unless very strong evidence sometimes becomes available in its favor. (shrink)

Hominization theory speculates on the process and chronology of a human embryo’s ensoulment. Aristotle, a key ancient Greek thinker, presented his own hominization theory based on his hylemorphic metaphysics and pioneering researches in embryology. Thomas Aquinas, a medieval philosopher and theologian, built his Christian and Catholic hominization theory on the foundations laid down by Aristotle. The contemporary Roman Catholic Church, with its own prolife, anti-abortion and anticontraception agenda, modified the Aristotelian and Thomistic hominization theories by allegedly benchmarking on recent (...) developments in human embryology. This paper uses the archeological and genealogical methods, as developed by the French poststructuralist and postmodernist philosopher Michel Foucault, in reexamining these three hominization theories as discourses, in comparing and contrasting their epistemic contexts, and in peering into their respective genealogies. Contrary to common assumptions, these three hominization theories have very few elements in common and are actually divergent. The underpinning intention of this paper is to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary Roman Catholic Church’s hominization theory. (shrink)

This book brings together the most important theoretical work of James S. Coleman on problems of collective action. Coleman's work has formed a consistent and highly distinguished attempt to find an account of the workings of social and political processes rooted in the rationality of the individual participants. The chapters address in various ways the fundamental Hobbesian problem of order; the question of how a set of self-interested individuals can arrive at some kind of social order. The volume (...) is organised in three parts. The essays in Part I address the problem of social choice as a fundamental problem of the functioning of social systems. Those in Part II deal with relations of power as a crucial aspect of the relations between individual actions and their social consequences. Part III considers the question of the creation of collectivities and the rights that are allocated under them. As a whole, the volume demonstrates the integration and force of the views Coleman has developed. (shrink)

Originally published in 1934, this book contains the last three books of the Latin text of Cicero's Disputations at Tusculum, the second volume of Dougan's two-volume critical edition of the text. The Latin is accompanied by a running commentary, and Dougan provides an introduction on the arguments contained in the books and the manuscript sources for the text. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the works of Cicero.